Truancy crisis

MORE than one tenth of North Down’s teenagers are regularly bunking off or missing school.

According to figures provided to the Northern Ireland Assembly, just over 11% of the borough’s secondary school age kids aren’t meeting the required 85% attendance record.

Amongst A-level students that figure is even worse, however, with more than 12% of 15 to 17 year olds not going to school often enough.

The worst performing areas are the Bangor Castle, Harbour and Dufferin zones of Bangor as well as Holywood’s Loughview. In each of those four regions, at least one quarter of teenagers in Years 12 to 14 are missing school on a regular basis.

The results for Loughview are equally bad for Years 8 to 12, with 25% of those kids not making it to school either.

By far the worst single number was in Bangor’s Whitehill, where more than 31% of 11 to 15 year olds were going missing from school.

The figures, which refer to the 2007/08 school year, were labelled an ‘absenteeism crisis’ by North Down MLA Leslie Cree.

“We have a real problem,” he said. “In areas where there is a clear cycle of underachievement and deprivation, non-attendance at school only perpetuates the situation.

“Huge numbers of post-primary pupils are failing to attend school. For example, in Whitehill almost a third of secondary age children are missing out on at least one out of every six weeks in school. That is a huge disadvantage and one that will impact on the rest of their lives.”

Mr Cree also said he was worried by the amount of Whitehill primary school kids who were playing truant from school.

“At this stage, where attendance might be expected to be at its highest, a staggering 12% of Whitehill pupils are absent at least 15% of the time. That is a significantly poorer attendance level than in other parts of North Down.